Early on Tuesday, Decentraland (MANA) trades bearish in keeping with the rest of the market but its losses remain lower than several of its peers on the back of promising fundamental developments. At the time of writing, MANA/USD is trading at around $2.07.

Despite the ongoing rout in the crypto market, NFTs continue to perform well, seeing strong demand and sales volumes over the recent weeks. The metaverse is no exception to this trend, with virtual land on Decentraland being snapped up for tens of thousands of MANA. Although in terms of weekly trading volume, it ranks second after The Sandbox, it has limited land on offer, making its virtual real estate far more valuable to purchase. Less than a week ago, a plot was purchased for $1.19 million within the Decentraland ecosystem.

Australian Open Headed to Decentraland’s Metaverse

MANA has received additional support recently after Tennis Australia announced a partnership with Decentraland to host the Australian Open (AO) in the metaverse. This will be the first official tennis grand slam in the virtual world, and will feature virtual recreations of areas around the Melbourne Park for a more engaging experience.

Tennis Australia NFT & Metaverse Project Manager Ridley Plummer notes, “With the unique challenges fans have faced getting to Melbourne, we’ve fast-tracked our launch into the Metaverse. Taking the AO into the Metaverse is an important step to provide truly global access to our great event.”

According to predictive analytics firm NWO, digital real estate sales within the metaverse will continue to rise through the early months of this year until they peak in May, beyond which the interest will continue to remain high. The firm leverages AI to assess and detect trends, forecasting that more users are seeing the utility of these virtual parcels and investing in them.

MANA/USD Technical Analysis

The host of Coin Bureau, Guy, has shared an optimistic forecast for the NFT sector this year, including Decentraland. In a recent YouTube video, he observes, “I think GameFi embodies one of the most exciting and leading-edge ecosystems in the blockchain space at the moment, and I foresee an incredibly bright future for some play-to-earn games, especially those with first-mover advantage like Axie, the Sandbox. Decentraland and a plethora of others.”

Taking a look at the H4 price chart of MANA/USD, most of the moving averages are exhibiting a bearish bias. However, popular technical indicators MACD and momentum suggest the presence of buyers as well.

Decentraland’s price remains quite far below the pivot point at $2.33; however, the immediate support at $1.49 is also quite distant. We need to see if the fundamentals manage to keep MANA above the psychological level of $2 until the market sentiment reverses.